Zelensky: 'We Dearly Appreciate Efforts of President Trump' in Defending Ukraine Sovereignty

CNSNews.com) - Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky told a news conference on Friday that relations between his country and the United States are "excellent."

Speaking at a joint news conference with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Zelensky said, "The United States have been and will remain our key ally in defending sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. 

"We dearly appreciate efforts of President Trump and his administration on this track.  We are grateful for your personal, unflinching, and unwavering stance regarding the war in Donbas and the illegal annexation of Crimea."

In response to a question on whether President Trump's impeachment has "spoiled" Ukrainian-American relations, Zelensky said, "It seems to me it's the other way around."

Speaking through an interpreter, he said:

We have excellent relations between our countries. We want these relations not only in words that the United States give us full support and defend Ukraine – this is really true – and support our territorial integrity.  It is not only about words, and its support should be like a friendship between countries, should be mutually advantageous.

We talked about many different contracts in different sectors and industries that we want to conclude between our countries.  It seems to me this is a new step in our relationship, a new sentiment, a new attitude. 

We have multiple meetings, and I don’t think that these friendly and warm relations have been influenced by impeachment trial of Mr. President, but many times I have reiterated this is our strategic ally and we are doing everything in our power to step up our cooperation. 

We are doing everything possible to ramp up investments in mutually beneficial projects.  For us, this is the strategy like in Donbas, and this is the strategy in our country – job creation, salaries raising, and increase of social safety for our population.

An American reporter asked Pompeo if President Trump conditioned U.S. aid or a White House meeting for Zelensky on "a specific corruption investigation" into Hunter Biden and Burisma.

Pompeo said he was "unsurprised" by the question.

"No, there’s no condition of the nature you described for President Zelensky to come to Washington and have that visit. It’s just simply not the case," Pompeo said.

We’ll find the right time. We’ll find the appropriate opportunity. We want to make sure that it happens at a time when there (is) substantial progress, things that we can deliver between the two of us, and there’s a lot of work. 

Our teams discussed today all the opportunities. We see the economic opportunity for American businesses coming here. We talked about a handful of them just this morning, companies by name, real projects.

President Zelensky will be welcome to come to Washington when we have an opportunity to do good things for both the Ukrainian people and the American people.  We’ll get it done. I am confident of that.

Zelensky, asked if he's still interested in coming to the White House, said he would be "ready to go tomorrow," once the two countries have "important things we can agree upon" and agreements they can sign.

https://cnsnews.com/article/international/susan-jones/zelensky-we-dearly-appreciate-efforts-president-trump-defending?